Task 4.4 Flashcards
What is the definition of attention ?
- Prioritised processing of some inputs, from a larger set of selectable items
What is the definition of divided attention ?
- we can focus on multiple things at the same time, but less accurately
- Example: campaign against driving and texting
- Depends on 2 factors
What are the 2 dependent factors of divided attention ?
- how constantly your attention is required for both tasks
- the relation and similarities between both tasks
- > Two task which aquire the same senses (hearing or seeing) are worse then a multitasksking task focusing on 2 different senses
What is meant by covert attention ?
- allocation of attention without making eye movements
What is meant by overt attention ?
- shift in attention accomplished by shift in gaze
What is meant by spatial attention ?
- prioritisation of an area within the visual field
What is meant by feature attention ?
- attention paid to features (colour and brightness)
What is the most famous featured attention task ?
- visual search task: traditional paradigm in which peeps are asked to quickly locate a target in an array of distractors
- Find Waldow
What is meant by object attention ?
- attention to one object rather than another object
What is the most famous object attention task ?
- The picture with the distinction between face and the house
Explian the four conditions of the method which prooved the existence of object attention:
- Four locations, surrounding a central fixation cross
- it is possible that in each of the four location a visual cue can show up
- All four locations are equally far apart
- you can either have horizantal or vertical rectangle
- Egyl’s experiment
Explain the solution of the study which prooved the existence of object attention:
- If we would test spatial reaction time then we would need the vertical rectangles and present the cue in the top right and top left corner -> no reaction difference
- If we test object attention then we need the vertical cues and agagin presenting the cues in the top right and left croner -> which prooved a fast reaction time then condition one since both of the target cues are now in the same objects !
What is meant by temporal attention ?
- surprised when we expect sth to happen at a specific point at time but it doesn’t
What are the two parts of attention ?
- Attention mechanisms
- Attention phenomena
What is meant by attention phenomena ?
-limitations, constraints, or even failures of attentional mechanisms (inanttentional blindness)
What is meant by attention mechanism ?
- determine which items are selected
- Top down
- Bottom Up
Explain inattentional blindness:
- Miss obvious changes in situation because paid attention to sth else
- Two criterias:
1. It was fully visible
2. Easily perceived in different circumstances
Explain change blindness:
Type 1: Simple manipulation between two pictures showing -> screen blank or a noise
Type 2: VERY slow changes without distraction-> Example: COURSE (u do not identify the change cuase they are unmeaningfull in the short term
- > Summary u do not perceive an obvious change
Explain attentional blink:
- series of letters is presented rapidly one after the other on a computer monitor = (RSVP; rapid serial visual presentation)
- Identify red letters
- Two red letters after one another
- Turns out (T1) is reported easily as one would expect. However, the second (T2) is often missed
- First target grabs your attention so your attention system is then out of commission for a small period after that
- 200 to 400 ms after T1 partcipan often miss T2
- 0 – 199 ms is fine
Explain the cocktail party effect:
- Attention system -> is able to voluntarily focus on what we choose to perceive and process
- In a loud cocktail party we can understand the person opposing to us
Explain the lunch line effect:
- On some level, your perceptual system tracks the environment for particularly salient stimuli
- Salinet stimuli = Name
- So even though u focus on a conversation u will know when someone calls u from the other side of the room
What is meant by SOA?
- Time which is needed to process
What is meant by intertarget interval ?
- From the end of one stimuli to the beginning to the next stimuli
What is an analogy of top down processing ?
- Edogenous attention
What is an analogy of bottem up processing ?
- Exogenous attention
Explain top down in depth ?
- Voluntarily focus and purposely select info to process
- Example: Cocktail party effect
- internally controlled attention
Explain bottom up in depth ?
- Attention doesn’t shift by choice but automatically by salience of stimuli in our environment
- lunch line effetc
- involuntary attention
Explain how the posner task is correlated to the top down process ?
- Goal: respond to this visual target as quickly as possible
Step 1: Fixate at a central cross
step 2: A symbolic cue will appear (Valid 75%,invalid25%
Step 3: Respond to target - Reaction time for valid cues was much shorter then invalid
- About 500 ms after the cue the target appears
- Top down has a beneficial effect on reaction time
Explain how the posner task is correlated to the top down process ?
- Same as top down but cues were different, not anymore symbolic but salient cues
- Valid Salient cue: predicts correct location (50%)
- Invalid salient cue: predicts wrong location (50%)
- About 100 ms after the cue the target appeared
- bottom up has a beneficial effect on reaction time
Which theories explain how attention works ?
- Broadbents Filter Theory
- Feature Integration Theory
Explain the Broadbents Filter Theory:
- It states that attention works with a hard filter
- was identified via the Dichotic listening task (different spoken stories to left and right ears -> could only attend to one)
What was the issue with Broadbents Filter Theory ?
- It could not explain the lunch line effect
What was the solution to boradbents issue ?
- Instead of a hard filter they focused on a Attenuation filter
What is meant by an attenuation filter ?
- This means that filtered stimuli are just very much weakened, but not completely blocked
- Salient stimuli could overcome the filter
What were further problems with the original boradbents theory ?
- He placed the filter quite early (allowing only basic stuff to be proccess)
- Nowdays the filter is placed much later (after the semantic/ word meaning process)
1. Sensory input 2. Filter 3. Higher lvl processing 4. Working memory
What is meant by tspotlight ?
Spotlight = Attention
- A spootlight task would be find waldoow
- You have some measure of control over the size of your spotlight
- is conncted to spatial resolution
How can u make a spotlight task more simple ?
- Creating a pop out test
- U need to find the correct distance
Explain the spatial resolution effect in in spotlight via crowding:
- Crowding effect is the visibility reduction of a target when presented with neighboring distractors
- Eventhough physical and other features stay the same
What is meant by the feature integration theory ?
- Same as boradbents theory, it contains a early selection filter and a attenuation version
- Stage 1: Early stage filter = Pre attentive stage
- Stage 2: additionally it contains a focused attention stage
According to the FTI theory what happens in the Pre attentative stage ?
- Analysation of only certain features such as
1. Colour, orientation, intensity…
2. Automatically and parallel
According to the FTI theory what happens in the focused attenttion stage ?
- Features which were encoded in the first stage are combined together via the master map
- Step 1 : it seperates every fature and encodes indipendently
- Step 2: Via attention the correct binding together occurs -> it uses spatial location
How is it called when the master map incorecctly combines certain feature ?
- illusory conjunctions
- occurs when attention system is meesed up
What is meant by the single resource theory of attention ?
- We have one pool of cognitive ressources which can be used for attention
- This one is fundamentaly limited
- It can be used flexible over multiple tasks
- But if the limit is reached the a degredation occurs
What is meant by multiple reassource theory ?
- Your body contains several cognitive resources which can be used for attention
- explains why 2 similar task are more difficult to pay attention to then in comparison 2 dissimilar once
In general what happens if u act multitasking ?
- You divid your attention so ur performance will decrease
What is meant by the balient syndrome ?
- Defi: Can “see” each but fail to see them all together and cannot accurately describe their locations with respect to each other/the person
- There is a disturbance in visual attention
What is meant by selective attention ?
- attention is allocated among relevant inputs, thoughts, and actions while simultaneously ignoring irrelevant or distracting ones.
What are the causes of the balient syndrome ?
- Bilateral damage to regions of the posterior parietal & occipital cortex
What are the 3 characteristics of the balient syndrome ?
- Simultanagnosia = only a fe items can be seen combined
- Ocular apraxia = deficit in making eye movements
- Optic ataxia = problem in making visually guided hand movements
What is meant by unilateral neglect ?
- Unilateral = when the brain’s attention network is damaged in only one hemisphere
- neglect = can not see the opposing side of the brain damage
What are the causes of neglect ?
- most often damage in the right hemiphere
- In particular a stroke in: the parietal, temporal and frontal cortices , basal ganglia, thalamus, and midbrain.
- it works contralateral
What is so special about neglect people ?
- They are not actually blind - If there is a strong salient cue in the damged visaul field they can detect it
- it is not a sensory deficits
How can neglect people be tested ?
- Eye movements are biased in the direction
- Via the line cancellation test
How does the line canellation test work ?
- the patient has to cut mutiple horizontal lines perfectly in half
- if all are shifted to one side then the patient is neglect
What is a unique factor of neglect ?
- It is not only present in the real world but also in the imagination world
What is extinction ?
- the presence of a competing stimulus in the ipsilateral hemifield prevents the patient from detecting a contralesional stimulus
- form of neglect
- less severe
How can extinction be overcome ?
- if the patients attention is directed to the neglected locations of items
What are the names of the two different attentional networks ? And to which attentional mechanism do they belong to ?
- dorsal frontoparietal attention network = Top down processing
- Ventral Attentional Network = Bottom up
- > Both interact with each other (cooperate)
What was mesulam idea of neglect people ?
- that the networks are damaged which caused the neglection and not a specific brain region
Which subcortical structures also play a role in attention ?
- the superior colliculi
2. Pulvinar of the thalamus
What is the major role of the superior colliculi regarding attention ? What happends if it is damaged ?
- main: overt attention and control eye movements
- difficulties in shifting attention and slow responding to cued targets
What is the major role of the pulvinar of the thalamus regarding attention ?
- main: covert attention, spatial attention and filtering of stimuli
- As the number of distracting stimuli increases, the activity increases
Explain the dorsal frontoparietal attention network more in depth:
- Bilateral: Superior frontal cortex, inferior parietal cortex, superior temporal cortex and insula
- Goal-directed attention control
- contains attentional priming
- generating task-specific, goal-directed attentional control signals
- > NOT DONE YET
Explain the Ventral Attentional Network more in depth:
- Strongly found in unilateral: Temporal-parietal junction (TPJ) & ventral frontal cortex (VFC)
- Main function: Stimulus-driven attention -> detection of salient targets -> the reorientation of attention.
- Acts like a circuit breaker: interrupts attentional focus established by the dorsal network
- Dorsal N provides TpJ with relevant info
What is meant by attentional priming ?
- After the cue was presented, but before the target displays appeared, activations were observed in visual cortical regions
- > Network prepares for upcoming stimuli
Still have a look on the dorsal network !! + Look at the graph rearding timing attention
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